Starlight Beyond the Gloom
by ncfan
Summary: What being a child of the Second Age has meant to Celebrían.


I own nothing.

* * *

When she was a young nís, Celebrían knew what it meant to be a child of the Second Age.

Celebrían was a student of history, surrounded by those who had lived it. Her parents, her cousins Celebrimbor and Gil-Galad, and many of her neighbors had borne witness to the momentous events of the First Age. All that they had seen, she learned from the histories and books of lore and legends. She was far removed from history, by time and by calamity that had sunk Beleriand beneath the waves.

The places where her parents had dwelled, she could not visit, for they were gone. She only knew of her father's birthplace through his stories; she only knew of her mother's birthplace through her stories. To be a child of the Second Age meant never walking in the places where her parents had walked when they were young, meant hearing of those places only in song and stories, and knowing that these things could never do justice to Doriath or Eldamar or the wide, sweeping grasslands of Beleriand.

To be a child of the Second Age meant knowing of one's family only through stories, and never knowing them any other way, for most of them were dead or had never left Aman. Being a child of the Second Age meant having only her parents and a few cousins scattered across Eriador and Rhovanion as her family. Celebrían learned to value the family she had all the more dearly for how diminished she knew her family was. That had to be part of being a child of this new Age too.

The valiant princes of the Noldor, the mighty kings of Doriath, Melian the Wise and Lúthien the beloved were all gone from the world. Many of the people whom the Edhil considered the best in the world were gone. Those who remained could not compare with those who had featured so prominently in legend. The world was considered much more gray and mundane for their loss.

To Celebrían, to be a child of the Second Age was to know that all that was good in her life could be lost, could be ruined by evil and darkness. She lived knowing that beyond the Ered Luin sat a drowned land, drowned by the Valar when they deemed it too corrupted by the Enemy to last any longer. As a young nís, she knew that being a child of the Second Age meant knowing that against the powers of darkness, the Edhil could never succeed in entirety without the Valar's intervention. She knew that when the Valar did intervene, the consequences would be terrible and nearly impossible to bear.

Being a child of the Second Age meant being a part of a world that was still being rebuilt. It meant being part of a people who were still reeling from their losses, meant living in a community where Celebrían did not know a single person who had lived in the First Age who had not lost family members or friends. It meant living amongst a people who thrived on stories, for stories were all they had left of those whom they had lost so long ago.

It meant being part of a people who looked tentatively towards the future, but ever cast their gazes longingly towards the past.

-0-0-0-

When Celebrían was no longer as young as she once was and had watched her three-thousandth year hurtle away from her, she knew what it meant to be a child of the Second Age.

Being a child of the Second Age no longer meant what it had when she was a child or a young adult. In the new Age that was dawning, when she told Edhil that she was a child of the Second Age, they would know that she had seen things she had never thought she'd seen, that she had done things she had never thought she'd do, that she had lost that which she had never dreamed she would lose.

She had lost yet more of her family. A beloved cousin had been lost in Eregion. Her great-aunt and uncle had been killed on the great plain of Dagorlad. Another beloved cousin fell in the dead lands of Mordor. She had slain Easterlings and Orcs, fighting until her sword blade was black and flinching at how her hands shook afterwards. What she had seen seemed to herald the end of days.

As a child of the Second Age, Celebrían had watched all that she had built, fair Eregion that she had helped build, be pulled apart and desolated by Sauron's greed and malice. She had helped build Imladris, and learned that it was better for a fastness of her people to be hidden far from prying eyes. She had learned that the work of her hands could be pulled down far more easily than would have been for stone.

With the example of Númenor, to be a child of the Second Age was to know that good people could be corrupted easily if their enemy only played on their fears. It was to know that corruption did not have to make good people evil, only sow the seeds of fear and greed in their hearts. With the example of Atalantë, to be a child of the Second Age was to know that when the Valar wished to wipe corruption from the face of the earth, they did not care if the innocent perished alongside the guilty.

To be a child of the Second Age was to know darkness. Galadriel had known the eternal night that blanketed Ennor before she knew the First Age of Ithil and Anor, but that was not the only darkness Celebrían had known. She had known the darkness of natural night that carried on too long. She had known the darkness of fear and doubt that could gather in her heart all too easily. She had known the darkness of roiling black storm clouds sent forth from a land ravaged by its master.

She had learned that it was possible for the One's children, Edhil and Atani and Hadhodrim to drive a new Enemy back without the Valar's destructive intervention. Sauron was not gone; Elrond had tersely reported that Isildur had not done "that which was necessary" to destroy Sauron's ties to the flesh. But a child of the Second Age knew that it was possible for Arda's children to strike effective blows against the Enemy who remained.

And Celebrían would never forget that no matter how dark Mordor's clouds had been, she could always see starlight shining behind them.

* * *

Nís—woman (plural: nissi)  
Edhil—Elves (singular: Edhel) (Sindarin)  
Atalantë—'The Downfallen', the name often used for Númenor after its downfall (Quenya)  
Ennor—Middle-Earth (Sindarin)  
Ithil—the Sindarin name for the Moon  
Anor—the Sindarin name for the Sun  
Atani—Men (singular: Atan) (Quenya)  
Hadhodrim—one of the names for the Dwarves, ultimately adapted from the Khuzdul _Khazâd_ (singular: Hadhod) (Sindarin)


End file.
